Online shopping is more popular than ever. Online, you can buy anything and everything. Online retailers frequently offer better prices than offline retailers. However, online shopping provides much more than just a reduced price. While saving time and frustration, online shopping allows you to browse hundreds of stores from the comfort of your living room. It gives you the opportunity to compare prices at your leisure for a virtually infinite number of brands and models.
However, there are risks associated with online classifieds shopping. There are a lot of dishonest people out there who are waiting to con you.
So, the following are some tips to help you stay safe while making online purchases:
1) Make a purchase using direct deposit, Paymate, or PayPal. For both buyers and sellers, PayPal and Paymate provide fraud protection. They offer a safe and dependable method of online money transfer. It’s no surprise that PayPal is the most widely used online payment method.
2) Never use Western Union to send money to unverified sources. This is a common scam tactic. Deal with small amounts at first, if necessary. You have at least reduced your loss.
3) Never reveal private information. Keep your self-information sharing to a minimum. You might be required to reveal more personal information about yourself, like your name and phone number, once the seller has responded to some queries and appears credible. Try to limit it to just that.
Before meeting the seller, we advise speaking with them on the phone in addition to email.
It is best to pay with cash and keep the transaction simple when using online classifieds. Use only Western Union or Moneygram; never use personal checks or money wires. Never divulge any personal information, including your social security number, bank account number, credit card number, etc.
4) You should never carry out a transaction without a contract. Hire a lawyer to draft the contract and represent you, but if you can’t afford one, the agreement should be in writing and signed by both parties in English. A buyer or seller who balks or shows hesitation frequently indicates a potential issue.
5) Use the major search engines to conduct a search if you plan to purchase a good or service from a website. Simply add “scam” or “fraud” to your search term that includes the name of the product or service or the website’s URL to see if a scam has been reported regarding that website or its products. You would receive pertinent results from this. You will be able to tell right away if it is a fraud or scam. After that, take some more time to read reviews of them.
6) If the buyer only accepts credit cards and there is no option to pay through PayPal or any of the third-party merchant websites like Clickbank, eBay, Amazon, etc., you should double-check a few things. The SSL certificate is the first thing to verify if that site has it.
There are criteria to check and know if the site is secured with SSl certificate such as wildcard ssl certificates.
While on that order site, check for certificate provider’s logo. This might include Verisign, Geotrust, Rapid SSL, Comodo, and others.
So use these tips and stay safe while shopping online.
